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Hillary’s Public Records Deception
Inveterate liar with a private email account used for government business, Recipient of millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments made to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State
Arnold Ahlert / Canada Free Press
In yet another damning revelation underscoring her unfitness for the presidency, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account to conduct government business during her four-year tenure as Secretary of State. According to State Department officials, Clinton may have violated the Federal Records Act requiring correspondence by government officials to be retained as part of the agency’s records.
A National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) bulletin issued in 2013 makes it even clearer. Explaining that there may be times when the use of a personal email account is necessary, “such as in emergency situations when Federal accounts are not accessible or when an employee is initially contacted through a personal account,” the bulletin notes that employees “should not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business.” However, if they do, they must “ensure that all Federal records sent or received on personal email systems are captured and managed in accordance with agency recordkeeping practices.” Clinton never had a government email address during her stint as Secretary of State, and her aides didnothing to preserve those personal emails on State Department servers.
Two months ago her aides did review tens of thousands of pages of those emails in response to a new departmental effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices. But it was the aides themselves who determined what emails to turn over to the State Department. Furthermore, as the New York Times explains, the total number of emails contained in Clinton’s account “is not clear and neither is the process her advisers used to determine which ones related to her work at the State Department before turning them over.” The aforementioned NARA bulletin also warns that Federal agency heads must “notify employees that there are criminal penalties for the unlawful removal or destruction of Federal records…and the unlawful disclosure of national security information[.]” This would seem to suggest Clinton’s aides are required to turn over allof the emails they had. Whether they did or not is anyone’s guess at this point in time.
Nonetheless, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill defended her conduct, insisting she complied with the “letter and spirit of the rules.” Yet he wouldn’t explain why she chose to use a personal account to conduct official business. He tried to rationalize it by saying that since she was conducting such business with other Department officials over their government accounts, she had “every expectation they would be retained.” However, Merrill offered no explanation regarding emails sent to foreign leaders, private entities, or officials outside the Department of State.
Clinton’s email account was discovered by the committee investigating Benghazi, in the midst of seeking correspondence between Clinton and her aides
Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at NARA, who worked at the agency from 2000 to 2013, wasn’t buying it. “It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario—short of nuclear winter—where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” he contended. “I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business,” he added.
Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a group of government transparency advocates based at George Washington University, thought it was a shame that such record-keeping didn’t take place automatically, “as it should have.” “Someone in the State Department deserves credit for taking the initiative to ask for the records back,” he contended. “Most of the time it takes the threat of litigation and embarrassment.” Blanton also offered the best rationale for avoiding the use of personal email accounts. “Personal emails are not secure,” he explained. “Senior officials should not be using them.”
Read more at CFP:
